This project was based on the idea of how a skyscraper should respond to the various gravity and wind loads a building will have to stand up against. Bjarke Ingels states in the project description that they looked at how skyscrapers are typically designed. When a building reaches a certain height, the gravity load, meaning the weight of the building, no longer is the primary load on the building. Wind pressing on the facade of the building becomes far greater as the height increases. Looking to the American skyscraper, which tends to be a square base (think Willis Tower, 1 WTC, the original WTC towers, Aon Center in both LA and Chicago), they are designed to always have a strong footing no matter the direction of wind, there is no "weak" side to the tower. But the problem with these is that they have to have a large floor space for the tower's shape, which lends to a heavy reliance of mechanical means of ventilation and lighting. A Scandinavian building (as this was designed for Copenhagen, Denmark), skyscrapers tend to be rectangular and fairly narrow to allow light and decent cross-ventilation into the building (limiting the need for mechanical intervention), but this means that only two sides are technically strong against the wind, and the other two don't have as strong of a footing. This creates a serious engineering problem. The Escher tower (named for M.C. Escher, as the tower had a resemblance to one of his drawings) keeps the narrow profile, but twists 90 degrees allowing for the sides with the most wind load to orient themselves to the strongest footing. Designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

Dimensions: 55 x 57 x 190

Using the High Rossferry City Texture Pack
Thank you to Darkone55


Escher Tower by jduartemiller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Additional Notes

Also, check out Ryermeke's awesome interpretation of the Escher Tower. We used the same references at big.dk. He has some great work.

And thank you everyone. This made it on to the popular reel for projects